Making Faces (45 page)

“Your father came and saw me once, a long
time ago. He was concerned about the same thing. He thought if he
looked different your mother wouldn't have left.”

Ambrose felt an immediate surge of pain for
his father and a corresponding flash of anger for the woman who had
discarded him for an airbrushed underwear ad.

“Can I suggest to you what I suggested to
him?” Joshua Taylor asked gently. “Sometimes beauty, or lack
thereof, gets in the way of really knowing someone. Do you love
Fern because she's beautiful?”

Ambrose loved the way Fern looked. But he
wondered suddenly if he loved the way she looked because he loved
the way she laughed, the way she danced, the way she floated on her
back and made philosophical statements about the clouds. He knew he
loved her selflessness and her humor and her sincerity. And those
things made her beautiful to him.

“There are a lot of girls who are physically
more lovely than Fern, I suppose. But you love Fern.”

“I love Fern,” Ambrose readily agreed, once
again.

“There are a lot of guys who are needier . .
. and uglier . . . than you in this town, yet you're the first guy
Fern has ever shown any interest in.” Pastor Taylor laughed. “If
it's all about altruism, why isn't Fern out looking to start a home
for wayward ugly men?”

Ambrose chuckled too, and for a moment Joshua
Taylor looked at him fondly, the lateness of the hour and the brush
with death giving the conversation a surreal cast that invited
candor.

“Ambrose, Fern already sees who you really
are. That's why she loves you.”

Fern was subdued as she helped Ambrose pack.
She'd been subdued all week. The trauma of Bailey's death and
Becker's attack had taken its toll and now with Ambrose leaving,
she didn't know how it was going to feel to wake up tomorrow,
completely alone for the first time in her life. Ambrose had helped
to temper Bailey's loss. But who would temper Ambrose's?

She caught herself refolding his shirts,
rewinding his socks, fiddling with things he'd put in one place,
unintentionally putting them in another so when he turned to
retrieve them they were gone.

“I'm sorry,” Fern said for the tenth time in
the last half hour. She moved away from the open suitcases before
she could do more damage and began making Ambrose's bed, simply
because she had nothing better to do.

“Fern?”

Fern continued patting, smoothing, and
fluffing and didn't look at Ambrose when he said her name.

“Fern. Stop. Leave it. I've just got to climb
back in it in a few hours,” Ambrose said.

Fern couldn't stop. She needed to keep doing,
keep busy. She bustled into the hallway, looking for the vacuum so
she could tidy up Ambrose's room. Elliott was working a swing shift
at the bakery, covering for Ambrose on his last night at home, and
the house was quiet. It didn't take her long to find the vacuum and
a dust cloth and Windex too.

She buzzed around Ambrose's half-empty room,
hunting dust bunnies and wiping down every available surface until
Ambrose sighed heavily and, zipping his last suitcase, turned on
her with his hands on his hips.

“Fern.”

“Yeah?” Fern answered staring at a section of
the wall where the paint looked suspiciously light. She had
scrubbed too hard.

“Put the Windex down and step away slowly,”
Ambrose commanded. Fern rolled her eyes but stopped, fearing she
was doing more harm than good. She set the Windex down on Ambrose's
desk. “The rag too,” Ambrose said. Fern folded the rag and set it
beside the Windex. Then she put her hands on her hips, mimicking
his stance.

“Hands in the air, where I can see 'em.”

Fern put her hands up and then stuck her
thumbs in her ears, waggling her fingers. Then she crossed her
eyes, puffed out her cheeks, and poked out her tongue. Ambrose
burst out laughing and swooped her up like she was five years old
and tossed her on his bed. He followed her down, rolling over so he
pinned her partially beneath him.

“Always making faces.” He smiled, running his
finger along the bridge of her nose, across her lips, and down her
chin. Fern's smile faded as his finger crossed her mouth, and the
despair she'd been busily avoiding crashed down on her.

“Wait . . . what's that face?” Ambrose asked
softly, watching the laughter fade from her countenance.

“I'm trying really hard to be brave,” Fern
said quietly, closing her eyes against his perusal. “So this is my
brave, sad face.”

“It is a very sad face.” Ambrose sighed, and
his lips found hers and briefly caressed her mouth before pulling
away again. And he watched the sad face fall and break into tears
that leaked out beneath her closed lids. Then Fern was pushing him
off, fighting out of his arms, scrambling for the door so she
wouldn't make him feel bad and make it harder for him to go. She
knew he needed to go. Just as much as she needed him to stay.

“Fern! Stop.” It was the night at the lake
all over again, Fern rushing away so he wouldn't see her cry. But
he was quicker than she was, and his hand shot out, pinning the
door closed so she couldn't leave. Then his arms were around her,
pulling her up against him, her back to his chest, as she hung her
head and cried into her palms.

“Shush, baby. Shush,” Ambrose said. “It's not
forever.”

“I know,” she cried and Ambrose felt her take
a deep breath and bear down, gaining control over herself, willing
her tears to ebb.

“I wanted to show you something,” Fern said
abruptly, wiping her cheeks briskly, trying to remove the residue
of her grief. Then she turned toward him and her hands rose to the
opening of her shirt and she began to undo the row of white
buttons.

Ambrose's mouth immediately went dry. He had
thought about this moment countless times, and yet with all the
turmoil and loss, he and Fern had only flirted with the edge, as if
they feared falling over. And privacy was hard to come by while
they both lived at home, the kind of privacy he wanted with Fern,
the kind he needed with her. So passion had been bridled and kisses
stolen, though Ambrose was finding it more difficult every day.

But she only made it about five buttons down
before she stopped, sliding her shirt opened over her left breast,
just above the lace of her bra. Ambrose stared at the name printed
in very small letters in a simple font across Fern's heart.
Bailey
.

Ambrose reached out and touched the word and
watched goose bumps rise on her skin as his fingers brushed against
her. The tattoo was new and lightly rimmed in pink, not yet scabbed
over. It was maybe an inch long, just a little tribute to a very
special friend.

Fern must have been confused by his
expression. “I felt like such a bad-ass getting a tattoo. But I
didn't do it to be hardcore. I just did it because I wanted . . . I
wanted to keep him close to me. And I thought I should be the one .
. . to write him across my heart.”

“You have a tattoo, a black eye, and I just
saw your bra. You are getting to be very hardcore, Fern,” Ambrose
teased gently, although the fading black eye made his blood boil
every time he looked at her.

“You should have told me. I would have gone
with you,” Ambrose said as he pulled his soft grey T-shirt over his
head, and Fern's gaze sharpened just like his had moments
before.

“Seems we both wanted to surprise each
other,” he added softly as she looked at him. The names were spaced
evenly in a row, just like the white graves at the top of the
little memorial hill. Bailey didn't get to be buried with the
soldiers, but he stood with them now, his name taking a position at
the end of the line.

“What's this?” Fern asked, her fingers
hovering above a long green frond with delicate leaves that now
wrapped around the five names.

“It's a fern.”

“You got a tattoo . . . of a fern?” Fern's
lower lip started to tremble again, and if Ambrose wasn't so
touched by her emotion, he would have laughed at her pouty little
girl face.

“But . . . it's permanent,” she whispered,
aghast.

“Yeah. It is. So are you,” Ambrose said
slowly, letting the words settle on her. Her eyes met his, and
grief, disbelief, and euphoria battled for dominion. It was clear
she wanted to believe him, but wasn't sure she did.

“I'm not Bailey, Fern. And I'm not going to
ever replace him. You two were inseparable. That worries me a
little because you're going to have a Bailey-sized hole in your
life for a long time . . . maybe forever. I understand holes. This
last year I've felt like one of those snowflakes we used to make in
school. The ones where you fold the paper a certain way and then
keep cutting and cutting until the paper is shredded. That's what I
look like, a paper snowflake. And each hole has a name. And nobody,
not you, not me, can fill the holes that someone else has left. All
we can do is keep each other from falling in the holes and never
coming out again.

“I need you, Fern. I'm not going to lie. I
need you. But I don't need you the same way Bailey did. I need you
because it hurts when we're apart. I need you because you make me
hopeful. You make me happy. But I don't need you to shave me or
brush my hair or wipe syrup off my nose.” Fern's face collapsed at
the memory, at the reminder of Bailey and the way she had lovingly
cared for him.

Fern covered her eyes, covering her anguish,
and her shoulders shook as she cried, unable to muscle the emotion
back anymore.

“Bailey needed that, Fern. And you gave him
what he needed because you loved him. You think I need you. But you
aren't convinced I love you. So you're trying to take care of
me.”

“What
do
you want from me, Ambrose?”
Fern cried from behind her hands. He pulled at her wrists, wanting
to see her face as he laid it all on the line.

“I want your body. I want your mouth. I want
your red hair in my hands. I want your laugh and your funny faces.
I want your friendship and your inspirational thoughts. I want
Shakespeare and Amber Rose novels and your memories of Bailey. And
I want you to come with me when I go.”

Fern's hands had dropped from her face and
though her cheeks were still wet with tears, she was smiling, her
teeth sunk into her lower lip. The teary eyes and the smiling mouth
were a particularly endearing combination, and Ambrose leaned
forward and tugged her bottom lip free with his teeth, gently
nipping, softly kissing. But then he pulled away again, intent on
the subject at hand.

“But the last time I begged someone I loved
to come with me when they really didn't want to go, I lost them.”
Ambrose wrapped a strand of Fern's red hair around his finger, his
brow furrowed, his mouth turned down in a wistful frown.

“You want me to come to school with you?”
Fern asked.

“Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“I love you Fern. And I want you to marry
me.”

“You do?” Fern squealed.

“I do. It doesn't get better than Fern
Taylor.”

“It doesn't?” Fern squeaked.

“It doesn't.” Ambrose couldn't help laughing
at her incredulous little face. “And if you'll have me, I will
spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy, and when you
get tired of looking at me, I promise I'll sing.”

Fern laughed, a watery, hiccupping sound.

“Yes or no?” Ambrose said seriously, reaching
for her hand, the ultimate either/or question hanging in the air
between them.

“Yes.”